


The Shallow Drowned

by etherati



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Drama, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Roche, VaguePorn, gn!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:32:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The shallow-drowned lose less than we." In which Rorschach can't swim, but finds reasons to try anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shallow Drowned

**Author's Note:**

> GN/Movie Hybrid!verse, mostly in that Dan's got his heavier outfit. Set in 1971.

*

The last thug hits the ground with a satisfying sort of finality, leaving nothing but the sounds of ragged breath, the lazy lap of the water against the harbor embankment below, the buzzing background noise floor of the city.

_One_ person's breath, harsh and rough with adrenaline. Not two.

Rorschach doesn't immediately put it together - just casts around as he always does, for other targets, for those attempting to flee justice. For Daniel, too, though he rarely admits that part to himself, eyes falling on everything with the mask's same dispassionate gaze. There are no more criminals, attacking or running. There is also no Daniel.

"Nite Owl?" he questions into the darkness, and he isn't yet gripped by enough worry for it to color his tone, but there's something wary in the set of shoulders and face under the brim of his hat as he waits for an answer.

None comes.

Rorschach replays in his mind the last portion of the conflict. Daniel was fighting well tonight; was down to only one man still standing. They'd ended up on top of the row of crates along the edge of the wharf, and there'd been a splash - had there been a shout, too? In whose voice? - and looking now, all Rorschach can see is the silhouette the boxes make against the harbor skyline, jagged and crooked teeth chewing at the sky.

More jagged than they'd been before. There are crates missing. They must have fallen into the-

_(Daniel.) _

There’s a clambering rush, and the scene visible down the embankment isn't the worst it could have been, but it’s still worse than Rorschach had been hoping for. One of the crates is split open on the steep bank, the white-filled plastic packets they'd come here trying to prevent hitting the streets spilling from its fissured belly like entrails, shining and wet in the rising and falling water. The last man Daniel had been fighting is floating face-down in the water, near enough to the bank and its piled trash and industrial leavings to have cracked his skull open on something on the way down, a faint red tinge spreading into the dark water at the side of his head. Not moving.

_(Criminal, evidence. What else?) _

Rorschach strains his eyes through the mask, wishing right now for Daniel's ridiculous night-vision goggles- Daniel, of whom there is still no sign that he can see, the vaguely circular ripples being diffused and broken up by the moving water. It's shifting so smoothly it may as well be still, a polished mirror of streetlights - until the reflections are disrupted suddenly by bubbles breaking the surface of the water, a ways further out than the floating body. Their burbling shouldn't be audible over the noise of the streets behind him, but they sound louder in this moment than anything he's ever heard. A drowning man doesn't breathe out until he _passes out_, and that's when the timer starts.

Memorizing the location, Rorschach doesn't hesitate any further, suspicions as confirmed as they need to be. He pulls off the trench, the jacket, the hat and scarf, anything that'll weigh him down - pauses over the mask, eying the dark and murky water below. Hard enough to see, to find him down there, without an extra hindrance. It’s logical. He still feels a sickness settle in his gut as he peels it off, but he ignores it, toeing shoes off into the pile and taking the best running leap he can manage on the narrow wharf. Aiming for the site of that last, escaped breath.

It only occurs to him midair, poised to crash down in the next instant:

_(You can't swim.) _

And somehow, he can't find it in himself to care.

*

He surfaces with a sputter, coughing between water and air, and the brine and chemical pollution in the water stings and all he wants to do is stop for a minute and let it clear from his eyes but Daniel doesn't _have_ a minute. So he sucks in a breath, and stops trying to keep himself afloat. Sinks.

*

The water is dark and unnavigable, all liquid shadow and smoke, and he's down for a while and it _feels_ like the right place, like he should be finding something, like this should be easier - but he has no idea how deep this part of the harbor is, and there's just... nothing. He's about to try to get back to the surface for air when gloved fingers snag in something that feels like hair, waving loose in the water. He grabs on and pulls himself closer, finding the shape of a head, of shoulders and arms hanging lax - of metal and glass skewed off-kilter over the eyes, and a hastily pushed-back cowl drifting just behind.

_(It's the armor)_, he realizes disconnectedly, fingers scrabbling for seams and clasps that the soaked leather can't get any purchase on. _(It's too heavy.)_ He knows even before he tries - and he does try, arms hooked underneath Daniel's and fighting upward against the weight of water - that he's not going to be able to just haul him to the surface without some other assistance. He's just too poor a swimmer, unpracticed and unschooled, barely surviving down here himself on whatever primitive flailing instincts everyone is born with. No amount of will or determination is going to suddenly change that.

And his own air supply has already long since run out, lungs screaming, but his pain threshold is high and he ignores it - pulls himself closer, close enough to really see through the grey-black dinge, and lifts Daniel's lolling head to face his own. Pushes the goggles off of his face - eyes are closed, lips open and breathless and starting to go faintly blue. He just looks, for what feels like forever but is in fact less than a second - burning into memory.

Then all at once, blackness starting to crowd into his vision, he breaks for the surface. Ignores the protests of lungs and body and struggles back to the edge of the embankment, looking up at the wharf, knowing without knowing exactly what he's searching for-

_(There.) _

He reaches up and hauls down the coil of rope, already looped around one of the posts - probably meant for bringing in and tying off smaller vessels, but it looks long enough. The entire pile is tossed into the water, clear of the debris that could snag it, and he winds the free end over the palm of his hand once, twice… three times, before jumping back in.

This time, the finding isn't difficult - Daniel hasn't moved and his sense of location is impeccable, no matter the circumstances. He slips both arms under Daniel's, holds the rope between his hands, reels in the slack. Then starts pulling, hand over hand, six inches at a time, towards the open air above.

It's slow going, and it feels slower. As soon as they're moving, Daniel's head falls forward onto Rorschach's shoulder, limp and unresponsive, subject to the resistance of the water they move through and nothing more. When they've gone what must have been five feet, the pain in his lungs starts to dull in the wake of the black wisps curling in front of his eyes, numbness spreading, sparks starting to explode out of the darkness. After seven feet, his hand slips its grip and he almost drops Daniel - he recovers, but he's starting to lose his hold on where he is, what exactly he's doing and why.

After nine feet, he considers, in some faraway part of his mind, letting go and falling - letting the two of them settle amongst the garbage and seaweed and scuttling cold-water crabs and at least Daniel wouldn't be _alone_-

The water is nine and a half feet deep. He breaks the surface with a gasp, oxygen pulled in and cycled and rushed to his brain and again and again; Daniel is silent and still, dead weight on his shoulder and in his arms, and he keeps pulling on the rope, hauling them both to the embankment before his vision has even managed to clear. As soon as Daniel is flat on his back, sodden but solid ground underneath, Rorschach fights one clinging glove off and presses his fingers to his throat, searching out a pulse, even a faint one, even something erratic and frightening- anything at all.

There's nothing. And he's suddenly not thinking anymore, a rough sound ringing in his ears like the roaring of wind around Archie when he climbs partway through the hatch in midflight, and it takes him a moment to realize that he's the one making it. Fingers move without conscious thought, pulling at long zippers with more dexterity than he'd managed at the bottom of the harbor, splitting the armor open straight down the middle. The ungloved hand settles over the thin, soaked-through fabric of the undershirt beneath it, checking again, checking at the source, _please_ and _Daniel _and _don’t do this_ rambling through his head and spilling incoherently over split and bitten lips.

But no - still nothing.

*

_[He pockets the pamphlet dismissively; it should be enough that they risk their lives every night stopping assaults and saving people from the worst scum of the streets; there's no reason they need to play paramedics too. That's what ambulances are for - this is just more of Metropolis's nonsense, and he'll nod for now and dispose of the literature later. It's not as if he could see himself ever voluntarily touching a stranger - or anyone really - in that way, even to help them. He's honest about his hangups, at least – that’s better than most of the people here._

That night though, they take Archie down on his very first underwater test run in the east river, and it's like a ghost world - especially when they come across a picked-over and eyeless corpse wedged under a drainage grate, never missed, never found, left to haunt the riverbed with a stare like the empty black nothingness at the core of everyone's most basic fears. Daniel remarks, part lightly and part legitimately nervous, that Archie's new seal system might not hold up long enough to lock in the location to report to the police later; it holds and they do, but it's all Rorschach can do to not continually re-imagine the hull breaching, water rushing in, sweeping them down and apart and away. He realizes, partway through the scenario, that there's at least one person he'd be willing to touch like that, should breath and life be on the line.

At home later, the pamphlet is read and re-read and the diagrams committed to memory until the edges are thumbed off and the seams white and ready to disintegrate from overuse, folded and unfolded and turned inside out until the sense it makes is nothing short of instinctual.]

*

The noise is still there, involuntarily keening out of a throat almost too constricted for breath and driven to an arrhythmic staccato by exertion, but he ignores it, all of his weight behind his arms as he works to coax the body under him back to life. The thought that it might be too late - that he might have been down there, breathing water and darkness, for too long - is not one he's allowing to cross his mind. Under the armor, Daniel seems too human, almost frail, ribcage flexing effortlessly under the assault, and maybe he's pushing too hard - he hopes he isn't, but that's better than _not hard enough_ and really, this can't have gone on for as long as it feels like, can't have been too long, not _yet_. He ducks to press his mouth to Daniel's, breathing out forcefully, once, twice… no response. He isn't counting when he shifts back to work his chest, can't manage anything higher than two or three in his head right now, so he just pumps until it feels like it's enough, whispering things that make no sense in a paper-thin voice that isn't quite there.

A breath, deep, then down to give it over to Daniel. Another.

_(Take it...) _

And just like that, the mouth under his is pushing back up against him in a pure spinal reflex, crushing thin lips with damp and blue ones - and Rorschach isn't honestly sure if the sudden rush of warmth in his gut is due to the realization_ (he's alive, Daniel’s alive, breathing and alive)_ or due to the feel of that mouth against his, pushing and demanding and unlike anything he's ever-

Then Daniel is spasming under him, eyes wide in terror, rolling onto his side to cough up lungfuls of dirty harbor water- choking out desperate gasps while Rorschach just sits, knees in muck and resting back on his heels, one hand on Daniel's shoulder as he works on clearing the pipes and coming back to himself.

*

Consciousness comes back in a rush, and he's sure of that because consciousness _hurts,_ and it hurts all at once, pain starting deep inside and bubbling up and out, leaving burning sense-memory in its wake. What he isn't sure of is why he hurts, and why he'd been unconscious at all. Why he's wet. Who the drenched and miserable-looking person hanging over him is, and he's about to ask – or try to ask – when the distant streetlight glow catches the edge of a sharp and stubbled jawline and he recognizes it, understands what he's seeing. Understands its significance, in the kind of flash of epiphany only the nearly-lost can lay claim to, in those first adrenaline-flooded moments of life crashing back in.

So, a lot of questions, and only one answered, and even that begs more questions. The face over him is etched with fear and relief all at once, and it tugs at something, some vague half-memory formed in the hazy place in between the Nothing and the Pain. Pressure, and warmth, and a thread pulling him out of the darkness and...

"Rorschach," he manages, just barely – voice scratching roughly, tearing itself from abused lungs. The effort causes his chest to tighten, and that hurts too, on the outside as well as in – he feels bruises already spreading to the surface.

Just a nod from the figure above, mouth opening as if to say something; hanging there for a moment, then closing over whatever word failed to form, thin lips pressing into a tight line- and why is he watching Rorschach's mouth of all things, he sees _that _all the time, and he could be looking at the rest-

_(Oh.) _

The memory settles into place, a heavy weight seating itself into the confused and swirling sediment at the back of his brain. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s so _there_, running along his nerves as if it were happening now – sense-memory like a tactile snapshot, captured frozen in time. "Uhm. W-" He coughs, choking on the attempt at a vowel; Rorschach's hand is suddenly at the base of his neck, supporting the weight of his head as he curls in on himself, fighting for breath. The fit dies by degrees, and before he can lose his nerve, he rushes the words out: "Were you... were you _kissing_ me?"

An incomprehensible grunt, then Rorschach pushes back to his feet. "No," he answers, and it'd be convincing – really convincing – to anyone else. To Dan, it rings like truth mixed with just a little bit of lie. Rorschach walks away toward the wharf, leaving Dan propped up on his elbows. Reaches up to retrieve his things from up there where he'd dropped them; has to go up on his toes to do so. He pulls the mask on first, and he probably thinks it hides the sudden flush, but the heat-sensitive blots betray him, pooling dark and heavy across his cheeks. "You almost drowned. Your heart stopped." A pause, then: "Had to get you back."

And just like that, everything makes a lot more sense – mundane, common sense, but sense just the same. Dan leans back on his arms for a moment, quietly ticking boxes in his mind, letting each implication sink in. It explains a lot: The pain, inside and out, like a truck impact to the chest. The open armor. The half-memory, teasing him from the haze. The water. The fact that Rorschach’s as drenched as he is, and can the other man even swim? He isn’t sure, and the thought terrifies him for a moment, slicing through the rest of it. He's also cold, his clothes minimal under the armor to begin with and damp in the open air, and between the two he shivers violently.

…and dimly becomes aware that Rorschach has paused in reordering his clothes somewhere between putting the suitjacket on and buttoning it, and is watching him in utter stillness. Dan has a sudden flash of what he must look like – disheveled and pale and wet and still breathing hard, eyes unfocused without either glasses or goggles, armor covered in muck and split up the middle like some gruesome biology experiment. Half in the water, half not.

_(Almost drowned.)_ It explains a lot, but it doesn't explain the ink spreading like black-feathered wings over Rorschach's face. And Dan is shaky and somehow buoyed by the knowledge of how close to death he'd been – feels invulnerable, invincible, here in the aftermath, and there's something in there about want that rings to the core, never brought up or discussed or thought about- and missed chances, gone forever...

Or maybe it's just brain damage, a result of prolonged oxygen deprivation. That's a possibility.

Either way, he stares straight back at where Rorschach has frozen, hands pinched around the buttonline of his jacket, and says something he will later decide is either very stupid or absolutely brilliant: "Well... if that's all I need to do to get a kiss out of you, I should almost drown more often."

There's a brief, carefully metered moment - then a growl, and a flash of movement so fast Dan can barely track it. He's suddenly flat on his back again, Rorschach's palms spread against his shoulders, holding the rest of his weight down by... _god_, he's being straddled flat against the mud, and he’s too weak still to struggle – fire blossoming through his chest at the added weight. "No," Rorschach grinds out, and he ducks his head to where one of his hands is pinning Dan's shoulder, hooking the mask with his thumb and pulling it up over his nose. "Don't even- just. Don't."

_(Don't drown more often? Or don't joke about it?)_

(The second makes more sense, but…)

(…but what?)

Dan doesn’t verbalize any of it; just stares, struck dumb by the absurdity of the situation all at once - they're filthy and drenched and surrounded by garbage and this is a completely public place for all that it's mostly abandoned at the moment - but he isn't sure if he's being assaulted or _assaulted_ and in the end, he's too shocked by the warm press of the body above him to react to anything, to even consider laughing. To consider shattering it. He just. Stares.

*

A moment passes, and Rorschach suddenly realizes his position as if waking from a fugue - has no idea why he's pulled up his mask and no idea why Daniel is staring at him, eyes full of tension and cautious promise, and…

…no, not true. He has an idea. It's a sense-idea, not a word-idea, and it's swirling nausea and rushing electricity and _familiarity _all in one; a filthy hand reaching in, stirring at his insides. At this angle Dan's eyes are wide and unmoving and shadowed deeply, black inside of black, like the endless gaze of the shallow-drowned corpse in the east river, and it'd been so _close_. He almost hadn't come back. Almost slipped away.

There's a choked-off hitch in Rorschach's breath, and he leans in closer, against Daniel's face, pulling air in harshly through his nose. Salt. Plant life. The organic tang seawater takes on from so many things living and dying and being born in it, a constant cycle of decay that leaves its own unique mark. Underneath it all, something like fear, but without that sharpness. Anticipation, maybe. Endorphins. Possibly attributable to the body rushing back to life all at once. Possibly not. The skin under his face shivers lightly and he pulls back up, and his voice isn't really his own and he has no idea where the words are coming from, but they still drop into the space between them, condemning in their implication: "...Don't need to."

And then Daniel's gotten one hand up around the back of his neck, the damp leather grating roughly over skin, and he lets himself be pulled down against lips no longer blue, no longer cold, all life and warmth and the sheer physicality of it, the visceral grip Daniel's vitality is spinning just under his skin, near about overwhelms him. He pulls back, panic crowding in, struggling to get off of the other man, away, back to his feet, and what was he thinking getting in this position in the first place and-

-and Daniel's hands are solid around his upper arms, just above the elbows, and they're gridlocked – each holding the other in place, with neither having the leverage to break it in their favor.

"Hey," Daniel whispers, though likely because his throat is too raw for more volume rather than out of any perceived need for gentleness. "It's okay."

No. It isn't. It doesn't matter how glad he is that Daniel is alive – how close to death they'd both been, pulling so slowly along that rope, creeping towards life-giving oxygen and so unlikely to reach it. It doesn't matter that he'd jumped in without a second thought, could've died right then and there- hit something under the surface, or just caught a lungful of water and sunk like a stone. It doesn't matter how easily this could have ended in a dozen ways that would have left one or the other of them alone and broken; a dozen other ways yet that they could have both wound up on the muddy floor of the harbor, to be found or not found at the whim of the tides.

And what _really_ doesn't matter is the swell of warm pleasure that was stirred out of the depths the moment the mouth under his started to respond – has refused to dissipate, is lingering even now, wrapped up in a cord that Daniel is tugging at insistently. Probably unknowingly. Breath, eyes- hands on his arms, each gloved fingertip damp through the fabric of his suitcoat. Tugging, and pulling, and reeling in.

Doesn't _matter_.

"It's okay," Daniel repeats, letting go with one hand – freeing it to loop over Rorschach's back, pull him down between the edges of the armor and against the thin cloth underneath, buried in the clinging smell of salt. He doesn’t have the leverage to resist, and there's no mistaking the heat there, or the stiff pressure, or the way skin is jumping and jittering under damp cloth.

"Nrrg." It’s throaty and rough; protesting, but just barely. "You don't want this." And Rorschach doesn't really believe it, can't believe it at this point – evidence to the contrary plainly obvious - but he says it anyway, because it's the only defense left. He can't say that he himself doesn't, not at this proximity; not without being called out as a liar.

Daniel does laugh now, a sharp and bubbling sound that looks like it hurts. Probably does. "I'm the one who just almost died. I think I have a clearer idea of what I really want than you do."

The mask is still painting a very specific picture, but under it Rorschach is narrowing his eyes, studying Daniel intently. Trying to fit the pieces together, all at once fascinated and horrified by the image they're forming. "You could still be confused. You were in the water for a long time. Oxygen depr-"

"I'm not."

Rorschach hesitates, is distracted by thoughts of brain damage and permanent personality alteration and all the other horror stories for just a second too long – and Daniel has reached up and closed the gap between them again, roughly, the hand on Rorschach's arm all confidence and familiar assurance and so very _Daniel_ that all the theories evaporate and, resistance spent and mind weary with the night's battles, he stops fighting - sinks down into the kiss. Sinks down against the body beneath him, between the split leaves of the armor and it's bizarre, like slipping into some kind of human-sized chrysalis and then there's nothing more to think about it because Daniel is moving under him and there's a shock of heat and suddenly the moisture under his mask isn't all just seawater anymore, sweat beading out along his brow and sliding, stinging, into his eyes.

There's a low growl, and Rorschach slides his hands from where they're pinning Daniel's shoulders up to grasp at the back of his neck – and grasp hard, thumbs digging under the base of his skull. It’s a grip that could snap a spine – has done so, rarely, when fights have escalated beyond capture and gone straight on into self-defense and the split-second decisions that kill or save the both of them – but Daniel shows no sign of fear, of anything but scrabbling need and trust, and that drives a spark of something unidentifiable straight through him, unraveling any remaining control into scattered and tangled ribbons. He jerks against the heat and pressure under him, rutting against layers of damp fabric no longer chilled, and there's a chorus of voices in the back of his mind calling out names like _degenerate_ and _scum_ and _filthy _**_animal _**and each blow lands, somewhere inside, somewhere soft and unarmored and usually locked tightly away. Each one draws out a wince under the mask- each word a razor-sharp splinter of self-loathing, bright against the haze of heat.

But then Daniel's arm tightens around his back and pulls him in closer and his motions are losing coordination, just gut-warmth and instinct and some terrible beast in his chest, driving him to fall headfirst into the man below him with no more regard for his own safety than he'd had leaping into the harbor. The voices fade, because everything is on _fire_ and it's pooling in his feet and his fingers and his face and somewhere deeper, curling around the base of his spine, unwinding. Daniel tenses against him, motion jerky and desperate, folding in on himself hard - groans into his mouth, the vibration driving all through him in waves of want and need and _life_\- and that’s all it takes, all he needs. Rorschach breaks the kiss, turns his head away, trying to hide; hide himself, hide how shameful it is that he wants this and that he's shaking on that same edge. The balance tips, and the sound that escapes him comes out in pieces, each more shattered than the last.

The black wisps are back, dancing at the edges of vision; This time, he lets them do as they will.

*

Distantly, he comes back to himself; breath still heaving, hips still twitching against the damp slickness spreading beneath them, never mind that the friction is unbearable – body craving contact while the rest of him has no idea what to do, reeling in a numbness that feels too comfortable to be healthy. Below him, Daniel’s eyes are shining now; he’s shifted out of the pool of shadow, and the whites and browns stand out in stark relief, picked out by stray streetlight. One gloved hand settles over Rorschach’s hip, not unkind but firm, stilling him. He’s smiling.

Rorschach is just barely present - panting, mouth open under the lifted mask - hands still clamped behind Daniel’s head, leaned as far up and away as he can get without disengaging. He’s unsure whether he needs to run away or hold on tight, both impulses rising and receding in turn, battering against each other. The toes of his shoes are in the lapping edge of the water; the wet, frayed rope lies nearby, just on the edge of vision. He’s been broken to pieces, and he doesn’t need to take off the mask to show it, every twitch and shudder as clear as a brittle fracture line, spidering out from his core, distorting the picture into a thousand tiny reflections and refractions and ghosts.

Everything tastes like silence- like salt and unbearable noise, and he suddenly has an idea of what it must feel like to breathe water, that hit to the lungs that burns, tears, makes the thought of air impossible. Shreds will and control to pieces; hands the reigns to instinct. He wonders if Daniel remembers, through the haze of unconsciousness that had followed; assumes that he does, or if he doesn’t, that he still _knows._ Understands.

Daniel doesn’t offer any clues - just hooks his other arm around and folds Rorschach down against himself, and does nothing but lie there and live and breathe, and for now, that is more than good enough.

*


End file.
